A Great Idea

I saw this really cute PDF for a dry erase menu board and decided that was just what I needed.  Cute and organized, perfect, but wait, I can make one myself (famous last words).

I decided to make mine using watercolors and a crayon resist.  I had been making magic pictures for Little Miss to paint earlier and thought that this would be a great way to keep the negative space white.  I penciled in my design and started filling in all the areas I wanted to stay white with my crayons.  Once that was finished I washed the entire paper with red watercolor.  Uh yeah, not exactly what I was going for.  It’s okay, but not the look I wanted.  I decided to sleep on it and see if I liked it better in the morning (I do this a lot, sometimes everything is great with fresh eyes and sometimes not). Ummmm, well it’s dry and now kind of pink and blotchy. Surprise, I still don’t like it, but while I was drifting off to sleep I had another great idea of how make look like what I wanted.  This time I carefully measured out all of my lines and rounded my corners using a giant wiggly eye (it was handy, what can I say).  I used slightly diluted acrylic paint to fill in the spaces I wanted red.  Better, I need to add another coat of paint and, of course, I need to do some lettering.  I think that I will stamp the letters.  I just need to decide what color to use, oh, and I’ll need a frame.

I think I’m on the right track now, and I do like the clean, modern lines in this one.  I’m excited to have a menu board, I like planning my meals, but have gotten out of the habit since Little Man arrived.  The thought of looking at the menu in the morning and knowing what will be for dinner is soooo much better than waiting until four and trying to dash to the grocery store with three kids.  I always come home with a bag full of junk.  Do you like to plan out a weekly or monthly menu?  Does it keep you more organized and do you save money?